Where Anger Comes From

It is good you have a heart. It is good when your heart is centered, when your heart is strong unto itself. It is good when you are content. You would like to be content all the time, and, yet, you sometimes find yourself discontent, perhaps angry, and, perhaps, in terms of the world, rightly so.

It is good to not let your anger run wild. At the same time, anger is a force that it is better to acknowledge than not to acknowledge. Repressing anger is not good for you. There is a cause for your anger, and it seems righteous to you. It may seem righteous to the whole world, and yet anger is anger, and anger repressed is like a pot of boiling water left simmering on the stove. The water is still hot. The water foments. You don't want to lash out in anger, and you don't want to push anger back as if it doesn't exist.

Have I not told you where anger comes from? It comes from judgment. You may well agree that judgment does not work in anyone's favor, and you don't like to hear that your justified anger is a result of your judgment. That doesn't seem fair to you.

Nevertheless, when you are irate, you have judged someone. You have judged a person guilty, and you have passed sentence on another, and you have passed a sentence on yourself. Anger is not in anyone's best interest, and yet it is good for you to acknowledge anger that holds you in its thrall and to recognize your responsibility for what is, after all, your anger. You are the proprietor of it.

The person who may well be unkind, selfish, heartless, rude, self-serving, unthinking, may well be unable to see beyond his or her own nose, and yet the anger is yours. No matter how egregious someone else's error has been, the anger is yours, and it isn't right. The anger is not.

The point is more like this: Judge not so you are spared anger. Judge not so you do not fume. Judge not so you do not go up in flame. Judge not so you escape self-righteousness.

You already know that anger forms a circle. It goes out, and it comes back. It is yourself, beloveds, that you put on the hot seat.

I am not coming here in defense of the one you allowed to incite your anger. If he could or would expand his thinking and his heart, you might not see cause for your anger. If you will expand your thinking and your heart, your anger would drop away. I am thinking that you are much better off without anger. Anger is not your friend, yet anger is a signpost. Anger says to you: "Brother, sister, acknowledge my existence, and then see about expanding your thinking and your heart."

The one whose consciousness stirred your anger may be no more than a poor fool. If he or she is a menace, an active inciter of anger, then he is a bigger fool. Nevertheless, he can see only as far as he can see. It is a question of sight. One who is blinded has not the eyes to see.

You, My beloved, may certainly be expecting too much from someone incapable of giving it to you. You are tilting at windmills.


				*Where Anger Comes From*